Killed in King's Cross

by Samantha Silver

  “And it was just sitting there until two this afternoon?” I asked.

  “Yes. What reason would someone have to go onto the roof of King’s Cross station? Leaving a body there for twelve hours carries small risk of it being discovered, especially if it was put in a rather discreet location until the killer decided to drop it through the roof. If the body was put up there in the middle of the night, the odds of being seen are lower, and simply covering it with a tarp or something similar would have prevented any calls to 9-9-9 from people in nearby buildings who might spot it.”

  I nodded slowly. “That’s actually rather ingenious.”

  “It is also why I believe we are not dealing with a killer for whom this is his or her first victim,” Violet said. “Everything about this is too organized. It is too perfect.”

  “Serial killer?”

  “I believe so.”

  “But why do something so obvious, then?” I asked. “I mean, if they’ve been killing before, presumably they haven’t been caught, or they’d be in jail. So why not keep going like they’re going?”

  “A lot of serial killers crave attention,” Violet replied. “My suspicion is that this man – or woman, though statistically it is far less likely – is attempting to goad the police, to show them how much better he is than them.”

  “Like the Zodiac killer.”

  “Exactly like that.”

  I nodded. That made sense. “Alright. So if TV and my basic psych courses have taught me anything, it’s that one thing is certain: if this is a serial killer, he’s going to strike again.”

  “Yes,” Violet replied. “We are absolutely working against a clock right now.”

  On that note, we knocked on the door next to Eloise’s, where Doctor Johann Persson had been staying. Again, no response. We moved to the last door, where Mr. Walter Knight was the registered guest, and found that once more, there was no answer.

  “We will have to return when it is more likely that the room’s occupants are here,” Violet said. “Come, let us go back to the lobby and get the copy of the security footage, and we can go back to my house and look it over.”

  As the doors to the elevator opened, a tall, thin man with red hair who looked to be in his forties stepped out, giving Violet and I a small smile as he passed. The two of us stepped into the elevator, but just as the doors were about to close completely, Violet stuck her arm into the middle of them, opening them once more.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, and she pointed.

  “Look into which room the man is going.”

  Sure enough, the man was entering the room of Doctor Johann Persson, one of the guests on our list. We stepped out of the elevator as Violet called out. “Excuse me?”

  The man stopped, the door to his room half-open. “Yes?” he asked, a slight lilt to his accent. Going by the name, I figured he must have been Swedish.

  “Are you Doctor Persson?”

  “That is me, yes.”

  “I am working with the police, with regards to the murder at King’s Cross station, and I am wondering if my friend and I could ask you a few questions.”

  “Of course. If you would like, I could meet you at the hotel restaurant in a few minutes. It has been a long few days, and I really could use a drink.”

  “Yes, not a problem,” Violet replied, and the two of us made our way back down to ground level and into the GNH bar, where we sat at a wooden table while waiting for Doctor Persson to arrive. I looked at the menu longingly, especially when I saw how good the food looked, but realized that this was probably not going to be a long conversation, and that Violet probably wouldn’t be super impressed if I took some time off from our hunt for a probable serial killer to eat some food.

  About five minutes later, the doctor made his way down, ordered from the bar, and then brought a beer over as he sat down across from us.

  “My apologies. It has been a long trip.”

  “Where are you visiting from?” Violet asked.

  “Stockholm,” Doctor Perrson replied. “I am here for a medical conference. As I returned from the conference I was attending, I saw what was happening outside. I assume that is the murder you are investigating?”

  “That is correct,” Violet replied. “Which conference are you attending?”

  “It is one for oncologists, which is my specialty,” the doctor replied. “In fact, the last events of the conference took place this afternoon. That is why I am enjoying this beer, then tomorrow I will spend the day sightseeing before returning to Sweden.”

  “Did you spend last night in your hotel room?” Violet asked.

  “Well, of course, but I didn’t get in until late,” Doctor Persson replied. “A number of colleagues and I had a late dinner followed by drinks that went well into the night. After getting my wallet stolen during the first day of the conference, I was ready to let loose a little bit, and I didn’t get in until four this morning.”

  “And today? You only just got back now?”

  “That’s right. The final presentations ended at three this afternoon. Luckily, they didn’t start until noon, or I’m not sure I would have gotten out of bed in time,” he added with a self-deprecating smile. Doctor Persson was definitely charming.

  “When you say you had your wallet stolen,” Violet continued. “Was your hotel room key in it?”

  “Of course,” Doctor Persson nodded. “But it’s not as though the person could have used it. The cards are blank, and there was nothing in my wallet saying where I was staying. It could have been a card for any of thousands of hotel rooms in the city.”

  Violet nodded slowly, as Doctor Persson continued. “Besides, nothing was taken from my room. Why are you asking, anyway?”

  “Oh, it is probably nothing,” Violet replied with a wave of her hand, but I could see from the concentrated look in her eyes that it was most definitely not ‘nothing’.

  Violet had an idea. I could see it in her eyes. “Alright, thank you, docteur,” Violet said, getting up and shaking the man’s hand. “I wish you safe travels back to Sweden.”

  “And I wish you luck in finding your murderer,” Doctor Persson replied. “I only wish that I could have been more helpful.”

  “You have been very helpful, thank you,” Violet said, and the two of us made our way back to the front desk, where Cara had a USB drive filled with security footage ready for us.

  “Here’s the footage you asked for,” she said, handing it over to Violet. “I do hope this murder has nothing to do with this hotel.”

  “Do not worry,” Violet said. “If it has, I do not think there is anything anyone here could have done to prevent it.”

  I smiled at a noticeably relieved Cara as the two of us left the hotel, with Violet hailing a cab to take us back to Eunston Road.

  “Do you want to come in and join me as we look at the tapes of the hotel?” Violet asked.

  “Sure, why not?” I replied. After all, it wasn’t like I had much else to do at home. I had to make a decision about whether or not I was going to go back to medical school this week, and that was a decision I was happily going to be a child about and keep putting off.

  Violet gave me a look, like she knew exactly why I was coming with her, but she didn’t say anything. Knowing her, she had almost certainly figured it out.

  But hey, it was my decision to procrastinate about.

  Chapter 5

  “If I’m going to sit here and keep watching hours of video where literally nothing happens, then I’m ordering Chinese food,” I declared three hours later. My original suggestion of doing the same had been shot down on the basis that Chinese food was “unhealthy” and “artery-clogging”.

  Ok, so that was totally correct. But at this point, my mind was starting to swim and I couldn’t bring myself to care about anything except that sweet, sweet MSG flowing through my veins.

  Violet rolled her eyes. “How on earth did you manage to complete a full education when you obviously have the attention span o
f a goldfish?”

  “It’s not that my attention span is bad, it’s that you’re a freak of nature,” I replied as I pulled out my phone and opened up my favorite food delivery app. “Anyway, I’m getting Kung Pao chicken, do you want anything?”

  “Digestion interrupts the activity of the brain,” Violet replied. “I will have a light meal, most likely a smoothie, to keep my body powered but prevent the post-heavy-meal sleepiness.”

  “You mean a food coma,” I replied.

  “Of course there would be a name for that,” Violet sighed. “So to answer you, no, I do not want anything, thank you.”

  “Don’t worry, I already placed the order,” I grinned. “I haven’t seen anything that sticks out to me in the videos, how about you?”

  “No,” Violet admitted with a sigh. “I, unfortunately, have not.” We had started by looking at the videos from right before 2pm. The focus had been on the angle at the front of the building, where we could see anyone going in and out. We watched the video in reverse, and I had to admit, after two hours, my eyes were sore and I was starting to feel like we weren’t getting anywhere.

  “Can’t we just play ‘spot the hooker’ instead?” I yawned at one point, and Violet scoffed.

  “That is easy. Her, her, and also her,” she said in the course of about a minute. Great.

  “Now if only we could spot the murderer that easily.”

  Twenty minutes later, the ring of the doorbell downstairs told me my food was ready. I made my way down and grabbed the bag, basically sticking my face in the brown paper as I headed back into the study, but quickly found myself distracted. Violet had noticed something. She was now sitting on the edge of her chair, her fingers moving the video back to a certain point.

  “Him,” she said triumphantly, and I looked over at who she meant.

  “The man with the suitcase?”

  “Yes, exactly. He is the one,” Violet said.

  “But how do you know?” I asked, squinting at the screen. To be honest, the video quality wasn’t great to begin with, and the man’s face was covered with a baseball cap. I could tell he was a man, he had short hair, and he probably cheered for Manchester United. That was about it.

  “Look at the suitcase.”

  “Ok, so he’s carrying a suitcase. It’s big, and it’s black, and it looks like every single other suitcase out there.”

  “Two things: one, he is not carrying the suitcase, he is rolling the suitcase. There is a significant difference. Even when he goes to the elevator, he rolls the suitcase directly inside of it. He does not lift it for a single second. Secondly, while it looks like every other suitcase out there, it does not look like every other suitcase of the clientele of this hotel. The key selling point to a hotel in a location such as this one is its prominence to the train station, and as such, it finds its main clientele to be business travelers – the sorts of people who do not carry more than a small bag with them at one time.”

  “So you think there’s a body in that suitcase,” I said, my eyes widening slightly.

  “I do,” Violet nodded. “I believe that is how the man got the body upstairs.”

  “And you think he had Doctor Persson’s room key?”

  “Yes,” Violet nodded. “The fact that he had his wallet stolen I do not think is a coincidence. I think the killer targeted him, took his wallet, and when he knew the docteur would be at the conference, he brought the body into the room, moved it onto the roof of the train station, and came back today to finish his performance.”

  “That’s insane,” I said, shaking my head. “And so incredibly risky.”

  “It is another reason why I do not believe this was this man’s first murder. An amateur would have made mistakes. This man knew perfectly what to do. He knew where the cameras were, he knew how to shield his identity, and he has made it as difficult as possible for us to track him.”

  “So what’s next? We have to figure out the man’s identity?”

  “That is correct,” Violet replied. “I think that if the police had his fingerprints on file, they would have got a match already. That means we should assume that he has never been arrested, and therefore that they do not know who he is any more than we do. Grab your jacket, Cassie. We are going to pay a visit to your boyfriend. He may be able to help us identify our victim.”

  Chapter 6

  Even though it was now almost nine at night, Jake was still at the morgue, working away. I wasn’t surprised; whenever there were major murders in London – and this definitely qualified – everyone involved in law enforcement seemed to put in the extra hours to catch the killer as soon as was humanly possible. In a case like this, which was already plastered all over the news, the police not only wanted to be able to catch the killer as quickly as they could, but they also wanted to prevent as much criticism of their management of the case as possible.

  No one wanted to be the one to answer questions about why an autopsy wasn’t done immediately because the pathologist wanted to go get a pint at five o’clock on the dot.

  That was why, when Violet and I made our way down into the morgue just before nine, Jake simply smiled at us as we came in.

  “Come for another look?” he asked. “I’ve just finished the autopsy, but my preliminary report won’t be ready for another twenty-four hours. But then, you’ve never waited for the reports.”

  “That is correct,” Violet said. “I need to know the time of death, and I need to see the body as well. I assume there were no personal effects that belonged to the man himself?”

  Jake shrugged. “No idea. That’s your department, not mine. I can tell you he died between seven and nine o’clock last night, give or take half an hour. And I can tell you that his personal effects are in the cardboard box over there, but as to whether or not they actually belong to him? No idea.”

  Violet made her way over to the box while I headed towards Jake, while he finished sewing up the Y-incision he had made in the victim’s chest.

  “Long day, I guess?” I said, and Jake laughed.

  “No kidding. I’m pretty sure my boss had an aneurism from the stress earlier today. How did you get involved in this, anyway?”

  “The cops came to my door when they were looking for Violet in a desperate attempt to get her to help them.”

  Jake raised his eyebrows. “Well, that shows just how important a case this must be.”

  “That’s what I thought,” I laughed. “And since I’m procrastinating when it comes to deciding what I’m going to do about finishing medical school, I figured I would tag along and see what happens. So far, we’ve figured out how he got the body onto the roof, and that we’re probably looking at a serial killer.”

  “How did the body get onto the roof?” Jake asked. “I was wondering that myself. Surely, someone would have seen it. And don’t think I’ve just skipped by the part where you’re procrastinating about your medical school decision. If you need to talk about it, I’m here. It doesn’t matter how busy I am with work, I will always make time to talk to you.”

  “Thanks,” I replied gratefully. A part of me was pretty sure I was going to take Jake up on that offer. I obviously was getting absolutely nowhere making this decision on my own, and a decision did need to be made. But, that was a problem for future Cassie to deal with. For now, I was helping Violet find a serial killer. “It looks like the killer stole the wallet of a person staying at the hotel that overlooks the roof of King’s cross station. Last night he took the body up to the suitcase, waited until two in the morning, then moved the body onto the roof and, we assume, hid it until he dropped it through the glass ceiling.”

  Jake let out a low whistle. “Wow, that’s quite something.”

  “Serial killers often are,” Violet said. “That is one of the reasons why we need to figure out the man’s identity. The video from the hotel does not help us in the least; the man has hidden himself too well from the camera. He knows how to blend into a crowd, and he knows how to avoid being seen.�
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  “Have you found anything?” I asked, but Violet shook her head.

  “No, I do not believe that any of the items of clothing the man was wearing were his. As they are all quite expensive, and all are far better quality than a homeless man in this city could possibly afford.”

  “I thought that was strange when I got him onto the table and undressed him,” Jake replied. “I’m no fashion expert or anything like that, but it was pretty obvious to me as well that this was a well-dressed man.”

  Violet made her way towards the body and began inspecting it.

  “There has to be a hint as to who this man is here,” Violet said. “Otherwise, I am afraid that I will be completely at a loss for clues, and will have no choice but to wait for this man’s next victim, and hope that that time the killer will have made more mistakes.”

  To be completely honest, I could barely fathom a world in which Violet was unable to determine anything about a person. She was so incredibly observant that sometimes a part of me wondered if she didn’t have secret magical powers. Okay, that was ridiculous, but her powers of observation were really second to none.

  I watched as Violet looked over every inch of the man’s body.

  “Did you wash anything off of him?” she asked Jake, and he nodded.

  “Sure. There was definitely a layer of dust and dirt on him. It had been quite a while since this man had seen a shower, obviously.”

  Violet frowned. “This is going to be more difficult than I thought.”

  My heart dropped. “There’s really nothing that can give you any hint as to his identity?”

  “I did not say that,” Violet said to me, shooting me a look that said I should have known better. “I simply expected it to be easier to discover this man’s origin.”

  “What have you found?” I asked.

  “There is a tattoo on his shoulder,” Violet said, and I made my way over to where she pointed. Sure enough, on the back of the shoulder blade, a small tattoo of a heart made of rope, with the center of the rope turning into a noose. While it was small, the tattoo was obviously of good quality. “I recognize the work of the artist who drew this,” she continued, taking out her phone and snapping a quick picture of the tattoo. “We can go and pay her a visit now; her shop will have opened for the night not long ago.”